Culture Part 1: Folk/Popular Culture and Language

Weeks 10 - 12

November 7 - December 1

Essential Questions

• What is the definition of culture, and what are culture traits?
• How does culture comprise the shared practices, technologies, attitudes, and behaviors transmitted by a society?
• How do cultural landscapes reflect combinations of physical features, agricultural and industrial practices, religious and linguistic characteristics, and other expressions of culture?
• How do regional patterns of language contribute to a sense of place?
• Why might language be considered a centripetal and centrifugal force?
• What are the different types of diffusion?
• What are the effects of the diffusion of culture?
• How can interactions between and among cultural traits and larger global forces lead to new forms of cultural expression?
• Why are communication technologies important in terms of reshaping and accelerating interactions among people and changing cultural practices?
• How do language families, languages, and dialects diffuse from cultural hearths?

I can...

• Define the characteristics, attitudes, and traits that influence geographers to study culture.
• Describe the characteristics of cultural landscapes and explain how landscape features and land and resource use reflect cultural beliefs and identities.
• Explain patterns and landscapes of language.
• Define the types of diffusion.
• Explain how historical processes impact current cultural patterns.
• Explain how the process of diffusion results in changes to the cultural landscape.

Standards

• SS.Geog4.a.h - Evaluate the effect of culture on a place over time.
• SS.Geog4.a.h - Analyze how physical and human characteristics interact to give a place meaning and significance (e.g., Panama Canal) and shape culture.
• SS.Geog4.a.h - Explain how and why place-based identities can shape events at various scales (e.g., neighborhood, regional identity).
• SS.Geog4.a.h - Explain how and why people view places and regions differently as a function of their ideology, race, ethnicity, language, gender, age, religion, politics, social class, and economic status.
• SS.Geog5.a.h - Analyze the intentional and unintentional spatial consequences of human actions on the environment at the local, state, tribal, regional, country, and world levels.